


Watching

by genteelrebel



Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: AU no families, BBC era, BDSM, Brief Bloodplay/Biting, Caning, Coming To Terms With Kink, Established Relationship, Flogging, M/M, Multi, My First Work in This Fandom, Very Brief Mention of Richard's First Accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 14:52:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13169256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genteelrebel/pseuds/genteelrebel
Summary: Jeremy’s POV.  What do you do when your two younger lovers start going places you just can’t follow them to?





	Watching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liz_mo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liz_mo/gifts).



> Oh, good gracious, I have finally committed RPS. I suspect if you’re reading this at all you already know this, but just in case: this story is a work of fan fiction based on real people. All the situations, conversations, relationships, thoughts and feelings depicted within are solely the product of my own overly fertile mind, and not meant to reflect on the three RL gentlemen in any way.

Richard Hammond is kneeling a few feet in front of me, right in the middle of James May’s living room rug.

He’s been there for what seems like hours, now, hands gracefully clasped to his thighs.  He’s wearing nothing but a pair of old, motor oil-stained jeans and a sheen of sweat—well, that and an assortment of bright red lash marks laddering up his back, marks that are even now beginning to darken into purple bruises before my eyes.  The look in his eyes is worshipful as he gazes up at the man who put them there:  James, who is fully dressed in jeans and a garage-stained t-shirt of his own, but who nonetheless manages to hold himself with all the grace and dignity of a king.  They have reached a moment of stillness now, James’s whip long since put aside; the only sound in the room is the continuously crashing tide of Richard’s breathing.  James says nothing, doesn’t move at all, but the erotic tension between him and Richard still manages to pulse with all the insistent force of a jackhammer.  James’s long fingers twitch slightly toward Richard’s face, as if he really wants to reach out to him and is using a great force of will to hold himself back. I know why, too.  If he did reach out now, did caress Richard’s stupid, ridiculously grey-free hair or even just touch his stupid, ridiculously lovely face, they both might come, just from that light touch alone. 

And shortly thereafter, so would I.

They are so goddamned beautiful together, just looking at them breaks my heart.

But then, almost everything about them breaks my heart, these days.

***

I want to say that it all started out so simply. 

It would have a fine ring, now wouldn’t it?  Such a strong point to launch a story from, what with all its subtle hints of innocence and that innocence’s eventual betrayal.  It’s the plaintive “But really, officer, how could I have known?  That hatchback just came out of nowhere” of good dramatic narrative.

But like most examples of good dramatic narrative, it wouldn’t be true.  The series of events that led me, the formerly completely heterosexual Jeremy Clarkson, to regularly share a bed with not just one, but two, of my male co-presenters were so ludicrously _un_ -simple that I never have figured out exactly how it happened. James claims he knows, of course.  He even says that all he needs is the time to draw up a good diagram and he’d be able to explain it to me.  But I don’t think even James understands why the Stig should have chosen that day to leave his…well, never mind.  Suffice it to say that the true story behind our very gay threesome-hood involved so much heartbreak, stupidity, and bizarre twists of fate that there are times when even I can’t believe it ever happened.  Despite the undeniable evidence snoring nearby and hogging all my blankets. 

But this particular chapter of it?  The thing that would eventually break my heart, not that I knew it then? 

Yes. That really did start out simply enough. 

It was a Saturday night.  Richard and I had met up as usual at what had become our favorite pub near James’s house.  We’d spent a pleasant hour or so together, talking and drinking and getting nicely blurred while we waited for James to arrive.  Once he did, we were all going to walk back to his place and shag. 

There was nothing new in this.  It was pretty much the way we’d spent every Saturday night during the two years we’d been together.  In the beginning, meeting at the pub had been necessary: all three of us needed to imbibe great amounts of liquid courage before we could actually do the deed.  Well, all right. Hammond, the horny sod, might very well have been fine with nothing but black coffee to lubricate his inhibitions.  But James and I both needed considerable alcoholic help. 

Of course, we could have just done our drinking at James’s, and saved the travelling.  But even more than we needed the alcohol we needed to start the evening out on neutral ground, to give each other a chance to relax and unwind without any real pressure.   James once told me that meeting in public made the whole thing a lot less seedy, too—made it seem less like we were being each other’s dirty little secrets and more just being us, mates getting drunk and taking the piss out of each other every Saturday night as usual.  So meet in the pub we did.  And really, the only thing that ever changed from week to week was just how much time Richard and I spent waiting before Captain Slow finally put in an appearance.  It had become that much of an unbroken ritual.

I had noticed as time went by, though, that meeting in the pub had slowly become less about acquiring courage and more about indulging in the oddest kind of foreplay.  There was something about being in public together, knowing what we were about to do but _not being to call attention to it in any way_ that was the most exquisite tease.  It was the ultimate look-but-don’t-touch, all of three of us knowing exactly what the other two were thinking but not being able to communicate it all—well, except through a few heated looks and hidden smiles, and the occasional furtive, under-the-table grope.  Not too many of those last, though, because we all knew what the stakes were.  Much as all three of us—yes, even James—loved the adrenaline rush of risk, we all knew exactly how bad it would be if we ever got caught; none of us were daft enough to think that Top Gear would survive if our newfound gay-threesome-ness became known.  And losing Top Gear was unthinkable. So we had each became expert in our own little language, figuring out how to broadcast how we felt and what we wanted without ever saying a word. 

Richard, naturally, turned out to be especially good at this.  He had a way of sauntering innocently up to the bar and leaning against it in a pose that perfectly showcased his legs and ass…he does have a very nice rear view, the cocky bastard.  Then he’d turn his head and flash a smile at both James and me over his shoulder that would…well, that would make it very difficult for us to sit still.  More than once, James and I couldn’t, and we ended up tossing back the last of our drinks and bundling our Hamster out the door before he could so much as get the new order in.  James said later that Hammond must have perfected that lean in art school as a way of avoiding paying for his round.  But as he had his cock in Richard’s mouth when he said it, and there was a breathy “Oh, fuck,” or a “God, that’s good” in between almost each and every word, I don’t think he was really that displeased….

I just realized that I’m quoting James an awful lot as I’m writing this, aren’t I.  The thing is, he’s just better at putting things together than I am, words as well as engines.  I’ll never admit it to him, but I do actually listen when he talks.  And miss it terribly when I’m not around to hear him.  That’s why it was so hard when…never mind.  I’m getting ahead of myself again.

So.  Like I said, it was a Saturday night, just like any other Saturday night.  Richard and I had gotten there even earlier than usual, but we were both doing our best to be good—trying to keep the conversation on neutral matters and not let the ever-present embers between us smolder with too much heat, at least not until the third member of our trio was also there to enjoy them.  But it had been a long, frustrating week, and the later it got, the more difficult it was to keep things under control.  By the time James finally called my mobile, with the news that there’d been a bad accident on the motorway and traffic was crawling so slowly that it would be another hour at least before he could arrive, both of us were about to boil over.  When James suggested that we should just go ahead to his, let ourselves in, and get started on that ‘special project’ we’d planned for the night without him, neither of us argued too much. 

Well.  I _tried_ to argue.  And no, I wasn’t being noble, not that anyone who reads the papers now would ever accuse me of such a thing.  I just had this strange feeling that if we ever stopped having sex as a threesome, we’d stop _being_ a threesome for good, and that was a fate far too horrible to contemplate.  So I did hem and haw into the phone for a bit.  Richard, though, grabbed the phone out of my hand, said “That’sagreatideaJames thankyouJames we’llseeyousoonJames” before throwing the phone back in my lap and bolting off to pay our tab. James was still laughing that silly braying heehaw of his when I hung up.  And fifteen minutes later Richard and I were in James’s bedroom and…yeah.

I’d thought during the walk over that it might be awkward, suddenly being just Richard-and-Jeremy instead of being Richard-and-Jeremy-and-James.  During that long, awkward time before the Stig finally made us realize how all three of us felt, James and I had been together several times without Richard--but neither of us had ever had sex with Richard without the other, not once in more than two years.  I’d expected it to feel very odd.  And maybe not to go anywhere at all, like two wheels abruptly missing the axle that connected them. 

Richard didn’t let it happen like that, though.  He just pushed me onto the bed, climbed aboard, and had his way with me…with the happy end result that we’d both already come once and Richard was just beginning to get revved up for his second round when James did finally arrive.  I was sitting on the edge of the mattress leisurely sucking Richard’s cock, taking my time about getting him nice and hard again, when we heard James’s footsteps coming up the stairs.  He could have joined in any time he wanted, of course, but I guess we were making enough of a picture that he didn’t care to interrupt.  He just watched from the open bedroom door, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed, blue eyes glittering. 

So Richard and I played into that a little.  We put on a bit of a show, me licking sloppily up and down Richard’s cock until it glistened, Richard stroking his own cock and lazily opening up his ass with his other hand whenever my neck needed a rest.  By the time Richard had worked up to three fingers and was contentedly asking James whether or not he wanted to fuck him, James was like a tightly wound spring.  He had Richard pushed up against the bedroom wall and was inside him in less time than it takes to tell it, humping away like a teenager—and even though I could tell James was trying to hold back enough to make sure that Richard enjoyed himself too, I knew he wasn’t going to last long.  For his part, Richard just smiled indulgently, whispering lots of words like “yes” and “good” and “that’s it, come on”; he reached up awkwardly to stroke James’s wild hair when James buried his face in his shoulder.  James had been busily mouthing the skin there, and as his thrusts grew more frantic, he finally lost control.  His hand closed around Richard’s throat, yanking Richard’s head roughly up and back.  And at the exact same moment he bit into his shoulder, hard enough to draw blood…

Richard gasped and looked down at his shoulder, where a tiny trickle of blood was trailing down his arm…

…and Richard hardened all the way and _came_ , harder than I’d ever seen.  In fact, he shot enough to seriously mess up James’s airplane print wallpaper, even though it was his second orgasm of the night and by rights, even our ever-horny Hamster’s testicles should have taken at least a little bit longer to recharge.  James’s eyes went as wide as saucers.  And he came right after him. 

In the quiet that followed, James looked a bit shaken.  So did Richard.  But neither of them said anything about it, not then.  They didn’t even say anything about it later, when they’d both had a quick shower together, and joined me under the covers for some sleep.  And in retrospect?  That should have told me something.  The fact that Richard didn’t howl when James bit him, or at least say something like “God, James.  Auditioning for Twilight now?” when they came back to bed, or that James didn’t take the piss out of him for being so clumsy as to place his shoulder in the way of his teeth in the first place, was extremely out of character. 

Richard hadn’t been hurt, though.  The two of them came back from the bathroom with a neat little plaster over the bite, and I knew James was so obsessive about applying antiseptic that there’d be no chance of an infection.  Besides, I was tired, exhausted by a very hard week, and already half asleep.   So I just chalked it up as one of those things, wrapped an arm around each of them, and slid into dreamland.

But that was the night that things changed.

***

There are certain natural consequences, when a man of my advanced age and physical decrepitude takes a younger lover—or two--into his bed.  Eventually, the youngsters get bored and move on.  It’s the simple genetic need to keep hunting for the strongest, most capable mate--as James would say, it’s practically hard-wired into the human DNA.  It’s a story so old they were probably painting it on the walls when we all still lived in caves.

But at the time, I honestly hadn’t considered it would ever happen to us. 

You see, both of my bedmates had discovered during our very first night together that I didn’t have anything like their…energy.  I’m not going to say “stamina” because once I did get it up, I could last as long as either of them, thank you.  Longer, maybe, since it really was ridiculously easy to get Richard off, make him pop like the teenager he still honestly thinks he is.  (Sorry, Hamster; The Truth Must Be Told.)

Still.  It did take me forever, usually, to get hard, and even longer to actually get off.  And whenever I did manage it, my stupid old man’s body was done for the night.  Game over, curtain down, fat lady sung, no matter how many times James tried playing Chopin on the damn thing with his fingers or how often Richard pouted at it lustfully and batted his eyes.  Hell, sometimes I was done for the whole bloody _week_ , not just the night…and if you think there’s anything funny about that, well, talk to me when you reach your own golden years, mate.  It certainly wasn’t funny to me.  In fact, it could have been very, very bad for me indeed, if James and Richard had decided that my one stupid reluctant hard-on per session wasn’t really worth the effort. 

They didn’t.  They took it as a challenge, instead. 

Oh, they didn’t try to change my body, at least not after that first night. I think it was pretty obvious that if I didn’t manage to sprout wood a second time _then_ it was never going to happen, no matter what.  But like a Top Gear challenge where they’d been presented with a rubbish car and had to make it work, they just took my many limitations in stride and made something fantastic.  And not just the limits of my sausage and veg department, either.  They also took my dodgy knees and back into account…you know, the ones that wouldn’t let me fuck standing up for longer than thirty seconds, or kneel down to give a blow job for more than ten, or even to attempt many of the other things far luckier people just take for granted.  James and Richard worked around it all. Most nights, I’d end up lying on my back in between them in the middle of the bed, doing my best with my hands and mouth while they came up with ever more creative ways to please me.  They both seemed to glory in seeing just how high they could push me, just how much pleasure they could make me feel. 

And for the longest time, I gloried in it, too. 

Oh, I can see you rolling your eyes and saying that of course I did.  Naturally, Selfish Jeremy Clarkson would love to spend a night watching his younger lovers fall all over themselves to indulge his every whim, yes?  But the truth was, they really didn’t have to do anything special.  I know I’m going to sound as soppy as a teenage girl when I say this, but…I really did just love being with them.  I loved being in between them when I came, loved seeing the intent look on James’s face as he watched Richard suck me off, or having Richard’s cock in my ass while James kissed me and brought me off in his hand.  And if the two of them weren’t always tired out when I was, and went on to enjoy another round without me—well, to be honest, I loved that, too.  If I didn’t fall asleep I’d just watch and store the images in my head, saving them up to replay the next time I was travelling by myself and needed to jerk off alone. 

God knew, I no longer needed to buy any porn.

But here was the thing.  After That Night, there started being something…new…whenever the two of them touched each other.

At first, it was really subtle.  A whispered word from James that sounded more like a command than either the endearments or the profanity I was used to hearing.  A new stiffness that came into Richard’s shoulders… not to mention his cock…whenever James put his hands on him unexpectedly from behind.  I could feel that the sparks between them were smoldering into something different, an entirely new kind of fire…I could even bloody _hear_ it, on the nights when Richard’s breathing hitched and he almost came just because James ever-so-quietly told him to get on his knees.  But it never went any further than that, and so it never occurred to me to be concerned.  As far as I knew, the three of us were still, and would always be, the three of us.  I honestly didn’t see any reason to worry.

Then they started coming to the pub together on Saturday nights. 

I’m a dense old bastard.  I admit it, it took me another month or two to figure out that they weren’t just arriving at the same time, but were actually arriving _together_.  Together-together, having already spent the day in each other’s company.  And why should I? Filming was going harder than usual that series, and the papers were being remarkably active in their attempts to talk the Great British Public into crucifying me on sight.  My thoughts were too full to really notice what was going on under my nose.  And it wasn’t like James and Richard were coming in the same car.  They both still drove themselves separately, so how was I to know that they had driven them from the same place?  I think I even made some dumb joke once about how if Richard kept hitting the pub car park at the exact same moment as James, I’d have to christen him the new Captain Slow and bump James up to Major.   Both of them almost spit out their beer when I said it, come to think of it… 

Oh, yeah.  I really should have caught on sooner. 

But eventually the day came when even I couldn’t miss the truth.

The great revelation happened during one of those times when everything else was already going wrong.  The moment filming had ended that series, I’d been packed off to America to meet with some sponsors—a trip that was only supposed to have lasted for ten days, but which had stretched to fifteen.  By the time I did get back, there were so many production meetings and metaphorical fires needing to be put out…and yes, one literal fire too, though I swear to this day that _that_ _wasn’t my fault at all…_ that I went almost another full week without laying eyes on the rest of my threesome.  Since by that point it had been nearly a month since I’d last laid _hands_ on them, let alone more interesting body parts, when our Saturday pub date finally did come around I was so keyed up that I arrived well ahead of time.  I sat down at our usual table with my eyes glued on the door, knees jiggling impatiently.

Give them both credit, for once they didn’t keep me waiting long.  They arrived maybe ten minutes after I did, James holding the door open for Richard in a ridiculously courtly fashion.  Richard actually blushed and looked down at his feet when James did, which, looking back, should have been another clue.  But I was just so damn glad to see them that I didn’t pay any attention.  They both looked so good, in fact...James in some godawful jumper my hands nonetheless itched to touch, Richard in a simple white shirt and beaded bracelet I longed to strip away… that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to wait until we made it back to James’s.  When Richard went off to use the gents, I followed him in.  I waited until he’d finished and washed his hands and the two of us were completely alone.  Then I slid the lock on the outer door, grabbed Richard by the arms, and swung him around to snog him senseless against the single stall. 

I had expected the protesting “Jez!  What in God’s name…”  that escaped from Richard’s lips before I kissed him.  That was only natural.  It was a semi-public place after all, and I had known all along that Richard would make at least a token complaint before he melted and started kissing me back.  What I _hadn’t_ expected was the “Ooof!” of pain that escaped him when I pushed his back against the metal stall wall.  Or the way his body stayed absolutely stiff and still in my arms, no matter how many of his hot spots I hit.  By the time I realized that something was really wrong, I’d already pulled Richard’s shirt out of his jeans.  My hands were roaming up the bare skin of his back, feeling…I wasn’t sure what I was feeling.  But heat, and the telltale sponginess of swelling, and a slight raised roughness in places where I knew there had only been sweet, smooth skin before.  “Good God,” I said, startled.  “What have you been doing to yourself now, you clumsy oaf?”

And I expected him to laugh and tell me a ridiculous story involving a practical joke gone awry, or maybe about a slapstick-worthy slip on James’s obsessively well-waxed kitchen floor.  But Richard refused to meet my eyes.  “It’s nothing,” he said, stepping away.  “Christ, Jez.  Don’t you know better than to molest people without warning?  Especially in public toilets?”

“I locked the door,” I pointed out reasonably.  Granted, it wasn’t much of a lock.  Just one of those sliding brass-bar thingies, one that had probably been in service since before the War.  But still, it was there, and I’d locked it, for which I felt I deserved some credit.  “And you are more than welcome to molest me in return,” I said, giving Richard a good broad hint of exactly what form I’d like to receive that credit in.  I even wiggled my eyebrows at him seductively for good measure.

But Richard completely resisted my seductive eyebrow-wiggle.  He just shrunk into himself, hands attempting to straighten out all the things I’d put awry: his hair, his untucked shirt. Which was fine, so long as he was doing things up in the front.  But when he started to reach around to tuck the tail of his shirt into the back of his jeans, he winced…badly enough that it managed to penetrate even my hormone-fogged brain.  “You silly old bugger,” I said affectionately.  “Why didn’t you just tell me you’d done something stupid to yourself?  We didn’t need to come out to the pub tonight at all if you were hurt.  We could have just gone straight to James’s…”

“Because I’m not hurt,” he insisted. 

I moved my eyebrows once again…this time not in a seductive wiggle, but into an arch of disbelief.  Richard wilted even further.  “Look.  It really is nothing,” he said.  “And we were going to tell you all about it tonight.  I mean, you could hardly avoid seeing it when we were…when we were.  Y’know.  Later.  But I wanted James to be there when you did, he’s much better at explaining things than I am, and….  Jez.  Jez, what do you think you’re doing? Gerroff!”  His voice broke off into an indignant shriek.  Because I… suddenly terrified that something was very wrong indeed…had forcefully spun him around.  And I’d tugged his shirt upward. 

I knew even at the time, I think, that I shouldn’t have done it.  It was certain that Richard didn’t want me to.  He squawked at me furiously, batting at my arms in a half-assed attempt to defend himself which I easily turned aside.  But that’s me, the story of my life…when I’m scared enough I just act without thinking, and heaven help anyone who gets in my way.  In less time than it takes to tell it, I had Richard back against the stall wall, facing it this time, with his shirt tugged up into his armpits like a three year old who’d gotten trapped trying to pull a too-tight jumper over his head.  And I stared.

Look, it’s not like Richard’s back was exactly an un-marked canvas.  Juvenile accidents and adult motorbike spills and especially one other incident we’ll never mention had all left their traces.  I knew, because during the last two years I’d run my tongue and fingers over every single mark, sometimes while they were still in the process of healing.  I’d even created my own marks once or twice, when in a moment of passion my fingernails had dug in too deeply.  Although, thankfully, never so deeply as to leave a permanent scar. 

I’d never seen him like this. 

Not that the wounds were really so bad.  They were mostly thin lines of bruises, not cuts.  The sponginess and the roughness I’d felt turned out to mostly be just large bits of gauze, taped with typical James-like precision over just one or two of the worst welts, where the skin had apparently been broken.  But the dark purple lines were all so bloody regular…laddering up Richard’s back as precisely as stair steps….that they seemed all the more shocking because of it.  And even worse was this: I knew what had put them there.  I’d seen marks like that on one of my mates at Repton once, one whose father ‘believed in traditional corporal punishment’—or at least he had, right up until the police had taken him away.  Those marks hadn’t been made by accident, or a practical joke gone wrong.  They’d been made by a deliberate hand.  One wielding a fucking _cane_ , or something very similar. “Bloody hell,” I said, my voice almost a whisper.  “Who did this to you?”

Richard swallowed hard.  “James,” he said simply.

“JAMES?” 

And that was it.  There was a red haze rising up in front of my vision; all reason fled.  All I knew was that I had to get out of there, leave that toilet at once, and go punch my former friend and lover James May repeatedly in the face.  The fact that I would be compounding what I thought was a horrible instance of domestic violence with even more domestic violence didn’t even occur to me; I just knew that something had to be done.  I went for the door, reaching for that damn sliding lock. 

But Richard was suddenly there, in between me and it.  He jumped up and down frantically, blocking my way.  “No, Jez, no, you have to listen to me,” he insisted.  “It’s not like that…it’s not what you think…”

“It fucking well _is_ …”

“It’s not.”  He grabbed my face in both his hands, cupped my cheeks, forced my chin downward so I had to look into his eyes.  “It’s not, because I asked him to do it.  All right?  Can you get that through your thick head?  I ASKED him to.  In bed.” 

And the room went very, very quiet.

Absolutely silent, in fact, except for the rather harsh sound of my breathing.  Not that Richard was breathing any more easily.  I could tell that, could see his chest swelling and sinking as rapidly as if he’d just gotten off one of his damn racing bikes, but…I don’t know, I didn’t actually hear it.  I guess that the sound of my own breathing was loud enough to fill up both my ears.  “Asked him to,” I repeated dimly.  “In…in bed.”   Richard nodded soberly.  I shook my head.  “Why…why would you…”

He gave me a tight, sad little smile.  “Because it felt really, really good,” he said. 

And you know what the really funny thing is?  Of all the things I could have focused on in that moment, it was Richard’s sadness that truly reached me.  He just looked so…resigned, somehow.  So convinced that I would never understand.  And I didn’t, of course.  I really, really didn’t.  I understood so little that my voice came out rather shrilly.  “Good,” I repeated.  “It felt…good.”

His eyes flashed.  “Yeah.  Good,” he said defiantly.  Then abruptly, all his fire fled.  Richard’s shoulders drooped dispiritedly.  “At least, it did while it was happening.  We both got a little carried away this time, I think.  I, uh, I’m still kinda learning where the limits should be.  James is, too…” 

He stopped then, because absolutely all the blood had drained out of my face, and it must have been obvious even in the toilet’s awful fluorescent light.  I found myself stumbling backward, too dizzy to stay upright, and grabbed onto the paper towel dispenser for support.  Richard started to follow me.  “Jez…”

“No,” I said, holding up my hand.  “No.  I’m fine.  Just…stay where you are.”  He obeyed me, stopping in mid-step, though I could tell by the way his hands clenched and unclenched that he really didn’t want to.  “’This time,’” I quoted dully.  “Then…the two of you have done this…more than once.”

He looked absolutely miserable.  “Yes.”

“For…”  I didn’t want to know, but I had to.  “How long has this been going on?”

“Almost three months now,” Richard said wretchedly.  “But Jeremy, honest, it’s not…we were going to tell you…Jeremy!  No, please don’t go…Jeremy!” 

Once again, Richard tried to get between me and the door.  But this time he was too slow.  With shaking fingers, I unfastened that damned slider lock, opened the door, and left.  First the toilet, then the pub.  Then the city.

Richard didn’t try to follow me.

***

I honestly can’t tell you where I drove, or for how long.  All I know is that it was nearly dawn before I pulled up in front of my own London home…and found James’s ridiculous little Panda already parked in my drive.  The man himself was standing leaning against my door, arms crossed, hair disheveled.   From the bags under his eyes it was clear that he’d been standing there for most of the night. 

He hadn’t needed to, of course.  All three of us had long since given each other keys to all of our respective residences, so he could have just let himself in and had a comfortable night.  But I was secretly, shamefully glad that he hadn’t, that I hadn’t just walked in to find him snoring in my bed.  Especially not since the first words he said were so very, very deadly.  “Jeremy.  What.  Did.  You.  Say.”

“Good morning to you too, James,” I said flippantly, for the second time that night attempting to shoulder my way past one of my lovers so I could unlock a door.  It only half worked.  I got my key in the lock, all right, but there was no way I was going to get through the door even if I got it open; James had slotted himself in between me and it, setting his feet with all the belligerence of a full-grown bull.  It would have taken an act of god to move him.  Which I am not, though I know there are people who honestly believe _I_ think I am.  “What.  Did you say.  To Richard?” James repeated.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh yes, you did,” James hissed.  “Do you want to know how I know?  Because he came out of that toilet looking like he’d been _gutted_ , Jeremy.  And once I got him home, he spent the next two hours curled up on my couch with his knees into his chest like a child, shaking quietly without saying a word.  I still haven’t gotten him to tell me exactly what happened in there.  So I’ll ask you just one more time.  What did you _say_?”  I stayed silent.  James’s eyes flashed lightning blue.  “God help me, Jeremy Clarkson,” he said, his voice somehow all the more savage for being barely louder than whisper.  “If you said or did anything at all to hurt him…to make him feel ashamed…”

And that was enough for me.  “Hurt him?” I hissed back.  “I’m not the one who turned his back into a fucking tic-tac-toe board, now am I?” 

All the color drained from James’s face.  He started to say something, thought the better of it, started to say something else.  Then he gave up and fell completely silent, looking down.  His hair fell over his face, hiding his eyes, and all at once I realized I hadn’t seen him do _that_ for quite a long time. Well, around other people, yes, but never when we were alone. The last time James had tried to hide behind his hair from _me_ had been the night he’d finally asked me, wistfully, if I thought I’d ever be able to fall in love with a man.  And I’d pushed his hair back and pulled up his chin and answered him with our first kiss... 

The memory had its effect.  Suddenly all my own hurt and anger drained away, leaving me feeling nothing but tired.  “Look,” I said kindly, far more kindly than I would have thought I was capable of even a moment before.  “Do you _really_ want to have this conversation on my front step? Where just anyone can overhear?  Because if you do, you’re even more of a stupid cock than I think you are already.”

James went paler still, but he nodded, and finally stepped aside. We both went through the door.

Funny.  Even though I’d been back for more than a week my house still felt oddly empty when we stepped inside, the same way it used to feel whenever I came back from long periods of filming away.  The air was heavy with that chill that has nothing to do with where the thermostat is set and everything to do with the lack of human beings living inside.  This was very strange indeed, since I’d eaten and slept there just the previous day, but maybe it wasn’t really.  Over the last few years, my house had slowly become a place where I just showered and slept and changed clothes…all my actual _living_ now happened at James’s.  And, in fact, just having the man come in and seat himself awkwardly on my living room couch warmed the place up considerably, even though James’s body language was cold enough to freeze a volcano.  When I’d tossed aside my keys and coat and joined him, I expected him to tear into me, make his words as cold and cutting as only a very angry James May can.  But even though his voice was tight, James’s words were restrained.  “Was it really that bad?” he asked softly.

“Was what that bad?”

“Richard’s back,” James answered.  “He didn’t want to see a doctor right after it happened, for obvious reasons, so I looked after him as best I could at home.  But he hasn’t let me look at the wounds since then.  Maybe I should have insisted, but…” James swallowed hard and looked up at me…and I finally I saw that he wasn’t angry, not really.  Just horribly, gut-wrenchingly afraid.  “So.  Is there something really wrong?  If there is…if one of the cuts has gotten infected, or was deeper than we thought…I’ll make him go see someone. No matter the consequences.”  

I went a bit pale myself, picturing some of those consequences:  headlines reading “Kinky Love Gone Wrong!  Top Gear’s Richard Hammond Rushed to A&E!” splashed over every tabloid.  “I don’t think you have to worry,” I said gruffly.  “No infection would dare to brave all that gauze and ointment you put on him.  You did a good job, taking care of him.”  James seemed to relax a trifle.  “Afterwards, at least,” I said, dropping my voice into a growl.  “I’m not even going to go into the utter, shite-ridden stupidity of taking a bloody cane to him in the first place.  James.  _What the hell were you thinking?”_

“I wasn’t.”  James ran his hands wretchedly through his hair.  “I wasn’t thinking, that’s the whole problem.”

“Then what happened?”

“We…”  James steadied himself with an effort.  “Richard brought me the cane, asked me to use it on him.  I wasn’t going to do anything more than tease him with it, maybe leave one or two light marks on his ass at the most.  But I….he…he was so…”

I swallowed, feeling my heart go cold.  “He was so what?”

“So beautiful,” James said quietly. “God, Jez, you know what he’s like.  When you’re fucking him and he’s under you and he’s so lost in it that you can’t make any mistakes?  When you know he honestly wants everything you can give him, and will just keep on asking for more?  It was like that.  I could see what the cane was doing to him, how each stripe pushed him higher.  Fuck, Jez, I could _feel_ it, like every stroke I was laying on him was hitting my own skin, too.  We were that connected…”  James brushed at his eyes with the back of his hand, and with another chill to my heart I realized that he was trying hard not to cry.  “But it was stupid,” he said resolutely.  “Utter shite-ridden stupidity, just like you said.  I’ve never caned anyone before.  I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and I could have really hurt him.  Even just letting it go as far as I did was bad enough.  Can you imagine what would have happened if we’d still been filming?  If we’d had to be on the set the next day?  If he’d had to _drive?_ ”  James slumped dispiritedly.  “I don’t blame you for storming out of the pub, Jez.  I’d be furious with us, too. What we risked…what could have happened to the show if anyone found out…God.  It’s fucking terrifying. But you need to blame me, not Richard.”  He laughed hollowly.  “And trust me. You can’t possibly blame me any more than I already blame myself.”

He looked so utterly miserable I felt the chill in my heart warm ever so slightly.  “I don’t blame either of you, you idiot,” I said harshly. “Except to learn that you two apparently still think so little of me as to assume I’d ever give a flying shit about the ‘risks’.  I don’t care if the two of you have been putting goddamned _gerbils_ up each other’s asses, James.  If one of you ever gets hurt having sex, you go to the hospital, and you tell the doctors all the truth they need to treat you.  Fuck the press and the show.  Nothing’s more important than you.” James blinked at me, clearly startled, and I swore internally—God, but the three of us were fucked up when it came to feelings.  “I didn’t leave the pub and refuse to answer your calls all night because I was _angry,_ James.”

He hunched his shoulders.  “Disgusted, then,” he said, and I could hear the self-loathing in his voice, the expectation of my rejection.  “Richard and I have always known that this…this kind of sex…wasn’t your thing, Jez.  And we know exactly how you feel about the kind of people whose thing it is; you’ve said enough over the years, both on camera and off.  I’m not surprised…”

I felt my hand clench on the arms of my chair.  “Right,” I said savagely.  “And the entire British car-show-viewing public knows exactly how I feel about homosexualists and environmentalists and people who ride motorbikes, too.  Fuck, James.  I thought you’d be the last person on earth to confuse the bastard I am on camera with the bastard I actually am.”  James blinked.  He looked startled, baffled, and I sighed, knowing there was no help for it but to spell it all out for him.  “I didn’t leave the pub because I was disgusted, either.  I left because I was _hurt.”_

“Hurt?”

“How else is a man supposed to feel when he finds out that his lovers…the two men he loves and trusts more than anything in the world… have been sneaking around having sex behind his back?”

For a second James just continued to look baffled.  Then all of a sudden, horrified.  “Oh, _fuck,”_ he said.  “Jeremy, no.  That’s not…that’s not what we were doing at all.  We weren’t…we weren’t _cheating_ on you.  We…we just…”  


“No?  Because that’s sure as hell what it looked like to me,” I said, trying hard to keep my voice steady.  “God, James. It felt like I’d discovered my wife had been cheating on me with my best friend.  Only a hundred times worst.  Because _both_ of you are my best friends, and both of you…well.”  I stopped. None of us had ever tried to spell out exactly what we were to each other, not in words.  We simply were, and that was enough. So it was better if I didn’t explain how to me, it really had been as if we’d gotten married somewhere along the line, said death-do-you-part vows that the three of us would be the three of us forever. Now, though, was not the moment to finally say that out loud.  It was far, far better to state my objections in milder terms. “It made me wonder if you two had gotten tired of me, were about to give me the push,” I finished dully.  “Stop being the three of us and just…just become the two of you.”

“No, _”_ James insisted, looking more horrified still.  “No, Jez.  We were never trying to cut you out.  Both of us would have much rather had you there with us all along. We just…” He trailed off.

“Yes?  You just?”

“Just didn’t know how you’d take it,” he said, hushed.  “The fact that we both…the fact that we _need_ this, the same way we need air to breathe.  How the hell could we begin to explain to you that Richard really, really needs to be hurt sometimes? Or worse, that sometimes _I_ need to hurt _him_? We didn’t think you’d ever understand.  And it was all so new, too.  We both needed time to figure it out…”  His hands were back in his hair again, tugging it into a disarray that would have been comical if he hadn’t been so wretched.  “We were going to tell you last night, you know.  And not just because of Richard’s back.  We’d been making the plans since before you left for America.  Rehearsing exactly what we were going to say.”

“Why?”

“Because it was time,” James said simply.  “Fuck, Jeremy, of course we knew it wasn’t right, keeping it from you.  But we honestly never thought of it as cheating either.  Because I swear to you…even when Richard and I were alone together, you were still there in the room.  There wasn’t a moment when we weren’t thinking of you, wishing you were there, wondering what you’d think and say if you were.  We always meant to bring you in on it eventually.  We just needed time.  To figure out how to explain.  And to make sure that this was really something we both needed.  That it wasn’t just a passing thing…”    

He stopped, looking at me helplessly.  And I’m only human.  Part of me wanted to scream and shout at him, pay him back for the shock and hurt I’d felt.  But most of my anger had evaporated back on the front step.  And even the small amount that had been left over was gone now too, like the last bit of air being squeezed out of a tire.  “Yeah,” I said gently.  “I figured it was something like that.”

James frowned.  “What?”

“Not right away,” I admitted, with an awkward laugh.  “It took a good three of hours of aimless driving for me to figure it out.  Then another two or three to figure out what I wanted to do about it.  But yeah. I got there in the end.”

“That’s where you’ve been all night?  Just driving?”  James looked incredulous.  “Richard and I both thought you’d be here, trying to drink yourself into forgetting what you’d seen.  Then when you weren’t here and you wouldn’t answer your phone, I thought you’d be at some bar instead.  Maybe…” He ducked his head uncertainly.  “Maybe even picking up some good looking lady to spend the night with.  You know.  Someone _normal_.”

I glared at him again, but it lacked any real heat.  “Arse,” I said.  “You should know by now that I never want normal. I always want extraordinary.  That means I want the two of you.  And the last thing I wanted to do tonight was to drink myself into a stupor.  I needed to _think._ Not forget.”

“I see.”  James still seemed doubtful, but willing to hear me out.  “And did you?”

“Yeah.”  Bitter laugh.  “Like I said, it took some time.  For the first 3 hours I was so hurt that you’d been doing something like this behind my back that I couldn’t think about much else.  But eventually I started wondering _why_ you’d kept it from me.  And once I got past that stupid part of me that kept insisting that the two of you had decided to heave me to the curb, I pretty much came up with what you just said.”  I shrugged awkwardly.  “I’m not a _total_ idiot, James.  I know you and Richard have been moving toward…something… for a while now.  Something new, something that belongs to just the two of you.  And once I got to the fifth hour of driving, I decided that maybe that was even okay.”  It was my turn for a helpless gesture, motioning futilely back and forth between me and James.  “After all, I had you to myself for quite a while before Stiggy made us realize we’d always be miserable not being three.  If I’m being sensible, I have to admit that the two of you could use some time to figure out…well, how to be the two of you.  I dunno, maybe…maybe to really work as a threesome, we all have to work as three individual couples, too.  I guess I can handle you and Hammond having ‘quality’ time every now and then without me if you really need it.  Fuck, it might even be really hot, if you ever wanted to tell me about it later. I just…”  I dug my toe into the living room carpet, took a deep breath.  “Christ, James.  Caning?   _Really?”_

James had actually looked like he was relaxing slightly when I started my little speech.  But by the time I’d finished, his face had frozen utterly, become as immobile as stone.  “Then that’s it,” he said, and I noticed that even though his face was frozen, his hands were not.  The right one in particular was shaking, vibrating hard against his thigh.  "That’s the thing you can’t get over.  You…you think it's morally wrong, then.  Hurting someone.  In bed."

I blinked at him.  "No.  Well, yeah, if they don't want you to, but it's pretty obvious Hammond did."  I snorted, Richard’s impassioned ‘I ASKED him to,’ once again ringing in my ears.  “Trust me.  He made that more than clear.  Or I’d have pummeled you into the floor back at the pub.”

Surprisingly, James actually looked relieved. He even managed to give me a tiny, watery smile.  "Then...if you don’t think it’s wrong, or abuse…"

“I just don’t get it, that’s all.”  I knew I sounded like a teenager, whining away about how he just didn’t get algebra, but I couldn’t help myself.  “Don’t get why he would want it, don’t get why the hell you would want to do it to him.  Can you…can you explain it to me?”

“I don’t think I…well, maybe.  Maybe I can.”  James got up off the sofa, pulling his shirt down with a resolute little tug.  "Stand up, Jeremy.  And hold out your hand."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me.  Just stand up and give me your hand."  I stayed absolutely motionless, looking at him suspiciously.  He sighed.  "Just trust me, okay?"

I still felt suspicious.  But at this point in the conversation, let alone in our relationship, it was a little late to be talking about trust.  So I just gave him my best "this better be good" look, stood up, and held out my arm. 

And suddenly I had to close my eyes.  Because James had slipped in behind me, his chin nestling just-so against my spine, and his fingers...his fingers were brushing over the back of my hand, moving in a soft, stroking motion that felt so damn good, it was like he was pouring warm honey over my skin. "Feel good?" he murmured.

God.  It really was unfair.  No man ought to be able to make anyone feel that good touching any skin you can reach without unbuttoning.  Especially not right in the middle of an argument.  "You know damn well it does."

"Yes.  I do.  But this..."  Just for an instant, James’s hand got heavier, stroking with much more weight.  It wasn't so hard that it actually hurt, but it certainly wasn't the warm-honey touch, either.  "This isn't as good."

"No.  It sure as hell isn't."

"And this..."  Suddenly his touch got a whole lot lighter, so light as to barely ruffle the hair on my skin.  It felt a bit like a bunch of bugs were crawling over me.  I stood it for a second, then lowered my arm and stepped away, looking at him questioningly.  James looked back at me calmly.  "And that was so bad you actually pulled away."

"Yeah..."

"Gentle isn't always good, Jez.  Neither is firm.  The kind of touch someone really wants at any particular moment is constantly changing.  The edge between too hard and too soft is something a good lover just has to learn how to sense, to ride the way a surfer rides a wave.  That's really all that Richard and I have been doing."  I must have made a disbelieving face, because he smiled then, brilliantly.  "Okay. I'll admit that our Hamster’s waves are turning out to be a bit...well, a bit choppier than most.  Not even he knew he wanted some of the things he wants.  And I certainly didn’t know that I’d enjoy giving them to him.  So we've both been learning, figuring out how much is too much, and how much is not enough.  But that's not really any different from what you go through with any long-term sexual partner that you truly care about.  It..." 

He stopped, having gotten a good look at my face.  I'm not sure what it looked like, myself.  But I know what it felt like: as sad and horrified as that poor bloke in Munch’s _The Scream,_ though I kept my mouth closed.  No wonder James stopped in mid-sentence. "I'm not convincing you, am I," he said.

"It isn't that." 

"Then what is it?

I crossed my arms over my chest protectively.  "What about your waves, mate?"

"I don't understand what you're asking, Jeremy."

"Yeah, you do."   I nodded tightly.  "How choppy are your waves, James?  You ever wanted… _needed_ … to do something to me that this old body of mine just couldn’t handle?"

There's this thing James does, when he goes from being baffled about something to sudden comprehension.  It’s like watching the sun come up.  His face softens, and his eyes get this soft glow to them, making them even bluer than usual.  It is extremely beautiful, and no doubt is the entire reason why those insane educational programs of his are as popular as they are.  I know I’d sit through an entire lecture on the chemistry of drying paint if it meant I got to see it.   “Then that’s it,” James said, nodding to himself as if he’d just figured out a minor mystery of the universe. “That’s what’s really bothering you.  You think Richard and I have been _unhappy_ , ever since we got together.  You think…what?  That we’ve been secretly craving this kind of sex for years, and now that we’ve found it together, we’re both going to leave you unless you want it, too?”

I didn’t want to say yes.  Especially since he was smiling at me now, this soft, tender, “God, you are so dumb, but I really love you anyway,” sort of smile that made it obvious he thought the whole thing was ridiculous.  But—well.  I had to know, I guess.  “Well, haven’t you?”

“Jeremy.  God.  Jeremy.”  He shook his head.  “How can I make you understand?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.   “But I really wish you could.  Because I’m kind of out on a limb, here.”  I chuckled hollowly.  “And somehow I don’t think all the exploded diagrams in the world are going to help me out.”

“Arse. It’s not like you ever learned anything from an exploded diagram anyway.  But maybe an analogy could…okay, I have it.”  James looked me straight in the eyes.  “You remember the first time we had oral sex?  The first time I ever went down on you, I mean, not the other way around.”

I had to squirm a little bit; just the thought had suddenly made my pants too tight.  It hadn’t been our first time together, or the second, or even the fourth or fifth.  When it did finally happen, he’d given me a smile I’d never quite seen before despite having known him for more than a decade, one that said “Man, do I have a treat in store for you” before he started undoing my pants with all the artistic flair of a magician performing his best and final trick.  It certainly felt like magic, not long afterward.  Over the years I’d become so fixated on James’s mouth…so close to me most days, only an engine coffee table’s worth of distance away at the most, and yet so impossibly far… that just the thought of being inside him that way would have been enough to make me come.  But he took his time, treating me to all the attention and skill he’d bring to rebuilding one of his damn motorcycles, and that was…something else.  Unbelievable, really.  And completely unforgettable.  “Of course I do.”

“Good.  Now I want you to think about the first time you did the same thing with anyone.  With your first serious girlfriend back when you were a teen, wasn’t it?  And then I want you to tell me.”  He looked me straight in the eyes.  “If I was some weird sort of sci-fi film thought cop who could delete things from your brain, and I told you that you could only keep one of those memories, not both, would you honestly be able to choose?”

Ah, well.  He had me there.  That first time, that very first time... It wasn’t just a sexy memory that could still get me hard, or even just a sentimental one I looked back on fondly the same way you leaf through your old yearbooks.  We’d both been fifteen and completely clueless, but still.  The way she’s trusted me, the way she’d teased me, the way she’d thought I was sexy enough to do that with even when the whole thing had to have felt, to her, as strange and as weird as heck...those things were a part of me.  From another life, yes, but still a part of me.  I shook my head decisively.  “I _could_ choose,” I said honestly. “If I absolutely had to.  But it would have to be life and death before I did.”

He nodded sagely.  “So.  If someone told me I had to choose between the kind of sex I have with Richard and the kind of sex I have with you...”

“Yes, yes, all right,” I said impatiently.  “You couldn’t pick.  And I understand that.  If someone suddenly told me I’d have to pick between the two of you, I couldn’t do it either.”  He started to speak.  I waved my hand to silence him.  “I _get_ that all three of us want the other two, James.  Yes, sometimes I wonder if we’re all barking mad because of it, but I do know that we do.  That’s really not the issue.”

“Then what is the issue?”

"I just feel left out, I guess."  He frowned deeply, and once again would have spoken.  Once again I stopped him.  “Uh-uh, no, don’t look like that.  I’m not confessing to a decade-old longing to get on my knees and call you Sir.  You don’t have to break out the whips and chains for _me_.”

He looked very doubtful.  “Ah, I could, you know,” he said, hesitance filling every word.  “It doesn’t have to be…I mean, what Richard and I have been doing is fairly extreme.  If you’re interested in pain, or bondage, or, er, anything along those lines at all, we could start out much more gently. Take our time, figure out where your limits are together…”

“Take it easy on the poor old man, you mean,” I snorted.  “No thank you, James.  That’s not what I meant, either.”

“Then…?“

“You and Richard have been spending a lot of time alone together, okay?  And like I said, I guess that’s fair. But when it is the three of us, I—I need…“  I stopped for a moment, groping for words.  James just waited for me, his eyes troubled.  “You two have hiding from me a lot lately,” I finally finished.  “Stopping yourselves from touching each other the way you really want.  I can tell, James.”

He was quiet for a long time before he answered.  “There’s two reasons for that,” he said at last, and I appreciated that he didn’t try to argue with me, didn’t try to tell me that I what I’d seen and felt wasn’t real.  “What Richard and I have been doing…it’s intense, Jez.  It’s been hard enough to figure out what we’ve been doing on our own, without bringing a third person in.  And…” His lip twisted sourly.  “We’ve been protecting you, I think.  Both of us convinced that what we’ve been doing was something you really, really didn’t want to see.”

“I’m not a child, James.”  James nodded, but he still looked troubled.  I sighed.  “Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought,” I said.  “I get that you’ve been trying not to shock me, or make me see things you think I wouldn’t enjoy watching.  But…it’s starting to drive me crazy.  If this is going to work, you two guys need to be you, the same way that I have to be me.  I need you to stop hiding.  Does that make sense?”

He looked even more troubled.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I’ll have to talk to Richard, Jez.  There may be things he’s not comfortable with you seeing just yet.  There’s things _I_ might not be, either. But—“ He shook his head.  “But you’re right.  If the three of us are going to keep being the three of us, we need to be upfront with each other.  And we’ve been hiding this from you long enough.”  He squared his shoulders.  “Saturday next at mine, then?  Assuming Richard agrees?”

I nodded. 

***

It didn’t go smoothly at first.  Hell, the first time James and Richard ever ‘played’ in front of me, they kept glancing at me so nervously so many times that eventually I couldn’t help myself—they were acting so much like a couple of teenagers scared of being caught necking by their parents that I had to laugh.  It ended up being the right thing to do, though.  Because both of them started laughing too, Richard uproariously enough that he fell over onto his ass with a thump, and when we’d all recovered from laughing at _that_ we pretty much decided the mood was broken for the night.  We ordered in pizza from the all-night place near the pub and watched a really bad movie instead.  And by the time James had given both Richard and me blowjobs during the thrilling car chase, everything felt a lot more normal. 

By the next weekend, though, everything was different. 

I knew it while we were still at the pub.  James walked through the door with this indescribable aura of intensity crackling around him, as focused and keyed-up as I’d ever seen.  He didn’t say anything, but drank his beer in almost total silence, eyes glimmering oddly from the darkened corner of the booth.  Richard, who had been bitching good naturedly about something or other right up until James arrived, went just as quiet as James.  We all finished our drinks in pin-drop silence, then walked to James’s just as quietly, with none of the teasing or arguing that we normally indulged in.  When we arrived and James let us in, Richard went through the door first. He just walked straight in and knelt in the middle of James’s living room rug, stripping off his shirt and shoes as he went.  By the time I’d followed and James had locked up behind, Richard was on his knees with his head bent, wearing only the trousers he’d worn to the pub.  He was holding himself so impossibly still that he almost didn’t seem like our Hamster at all. 

James strode over to him and put his hand in his hair, sharply tugging his head back.  Their eyes locked for a long, breathless moment, until Richard made a needy, broken little sound.  James instantly bent down, claiming Richard’s lips in a bruising kiss.  Then he straightened up and slapped Richard across the face.

It wasn’t a gentle slap. 

It _was_ a careful one.  Richard was left with only a slightly reddening skin over one cheek, no bruises or cut lips.  Still, it was more than violent enough to shock me--to feel like it was something that had no business being a part of us. It was so horrifying, in fact, that I might well have bolted…if it hadn’t been so obvious that it was exactly what Richard wanted. He made that desperate little sound again, this time followed by the same “Oh God, I really needed that,” sigh he always heaves when he’s just gotten his first good drink at the end of a hard day.  And then both he and James looked at me. 

There was the slightest hint of defiance in James’s blue eyes, a tiny glimmer of shame in Richard’s brown ones. But mostly there was just… patience.  Expectation.  And an unspoken question, to which I could only make one answer.  “Don’t stop on my account,” I said huskily, my body already responding to the sight of Richard’s beautiful bare chest and his obvious need, to the arousal thrumming in the air just waiting to catch fire.  “I’ll just sit here and watch.” And they nodded, and I sat, watching silently from a nearby chair while the two of them made love.

Because it was definitely making love.  I’d have had to be stone blind as well as old and broken not to see it. 

They really didn’t do anything that extreme, at least not then.  That first night, the first time I ever watched the two of them together, James used nothing on Richard besides his own two hands.  But hands can hurt just as easily as they can caress, can slap and scratch and restrain…and seeing James do all of those things to Richard might still have been too much for me, if it hadn’t been for the obvious tenderness that went into each and every act.  James just kept touching Richard with this overwhelming reverence, even when he was drawing blood scratching his nails down Richard’s arms or twisting his nipples with enough force to make me wince.  He was always _watching_ him, too: interpreting every gasp and movement of Richard’s body as if reading a secret code only he could understand, then using what he learned to make the next moments that much better, that much more intense.  And Richard responded with this deep incandescent happiness, one that made him even more beautiful than he is during every other minute of the day. 

Funny, how I’d never quite realized before that hurting someone during sex could show even _more_ love for him than treating him with gentleness.  Could be making his dreams come true.

And funny, too, that I hadn’t ever quite realized that letting someone _else_ hurt _you_ could be making his dreams come true as well, could show even more love for him than, say, fucking him senseless or treating him to the blow job of his life.  Because if James spent every moment watching and reading Richard, Richard spent just as much time watching James. Oh, there were times when he closed his eyes, threw back his head, and simply _felt_ whatever James was doing to him…moments I can still see if I close my eyes, because even at the time, they impressed themselves on my memory as being a sight far too beautiful for a flawed mortal man like me to see.  But more often than not Richard would be watching James back, and slowly I began to realize that their dance was far less one-sided than I’d thought.  It was as if every touch, every look that passed between them was an intense, silent conversation:  “Can I do this to you?  Will you let me have this?” from James, or “Will you do this to me?  Can you let me have this?” from Richard.  And when the answer was yes, as it nearly always was…God.  It was like neither of them really believed it was actually happening.  And their amazement and gratitude that it _was_ happening was so big it filled the entire room.

Watching that was very, very special.  And hopelessly erotic, too.

By the time James had gotten around to getting the rest of Richard’s clothes off, I was hard as an iron bar.  By the time James had let Richard come, I had come too, copiously, helpless as a teen being felt up for the very first time.  And by the time James had finally let himself come as well…in more of that oddly intense silence, with Richard once again on his knees before him, quietly painting broad white streaks across Richard’s worshipful face…I was a cooling sticky mess, with my heart as low as my trousers.  Because I knew then.  I knew for sure.

I knew that they’d found something almost every human being on the planet would have killed just to catch a glimpse of. 

And I knew just as surely that I would never, ever be a part of it.

***

It wasn’t that they didn’t try.  Both Richard and James seemed to have taken my words about not hiding anymore to heart; I honestly don’t think they ever made love again unless I was there to witness it. And for a long time, it seemed to be enough for them if witness was all I did.  Just being there, watching silently from my chair, was enough to make me a part of it in their eyes.  To make it more special, to add another layer of taboo and lust and love.  To make it _three._

I wish that it had been enough for me.

Because it wasn’t.  Every time I watched them, with every new intimacy I saw but couldn’t join in, it felt like another piece of me cracked away and died.  I wanted more than anything to do more than just watch.  To get up out of my stupid old man’s chair and join them on James’s living room rug, to touch and _feel_ as well as see.  It was the classic renaissance depiction of hell, like being a tortured, starving man kept chained within sight of a plentiful banquet I could never reach.  And the fact that it wasn’t James and Richard who were stopping me from reaching them…that they would have welcomed me at any time, would have done or let me do absolutely anything I asked for, no explanations sought…that just made it even worse, made the impossible that much more temptingly, hauntingly possible.  It was more than a saint could bear.  Let alone an impatient old sinner like me.

I think I knew from the beginning that something would eventually have to give.  But I had no idea when or how.

And so there came a night…God, how it hurts now even to think of it…when watching was no longer enough.  When James, standing over Richard, stared at me for several seconds too long.  When Richard, kneeling, suddenly whispered my name with so much love and desperate need that I just couldn’t stay in my chair anymore.  Slowly, feeling like I was moving through a dream, I got up and joined Richard on the carpet.  Then I sank down onto my knees at his side, every muscle shaking. 

The look of wonder on James’s face was indescribable.  He breathed my name with even more need than Richard had before he put his hands in my hair and pulled my head back to kiss me, just as he had done to Richard that first night.  I could feel James’s ecstasy as his teeth closed around my lower lip, gently at first, then with more pressure; he bit down with so much slow precision that I could actually feel my lip beginning to swell, almost as eagerly as my cock.  In another moment the skin would break and my blood would spill over his tongue, and for a crazy instant I actually _wanted_ that, wanted it just as much as I wanted my cock to spill over his hand.  I groaned helplessly…

And then the pain hit.  Reality closed in.  And I pulled away.

Well.  Less “pulled away” and more “blindly stumbled.”  I’m still not entirely sure how I broke free of James’s mouth. I suspect I shoved him away bodily, far too panicked to be gentle.  Because the next think I knew Richard was looking horrified and James was sprawling in an ungainly heap on the carpet and I…I was already at the door, struggling to do up my jeans with pre-come-slick fingers.  “I’m sorry,” I said.  “I’m so sorry.”

“Jez?” 

It was James’s voice, ridiculously gentle, the same tone he takes when soothing a frightened child or cat.  It almost always works with them.  For me, though, the gentleness just shattered my already broken heart into another few thousand pieces.  “I’m sorry,” I said again. And then I turned on my heel and fled.

I didn’t go as far as I had the last time.  I didn’t run to my car to drive through endless miles of anonymous highway. I didn’t even leave the house.  All I did was go down to James’s kitchen, where I found an absolutely horrible bottle of American rotgut whiskey-- I think it had been gag gift from Oz—and proceeded to get rip-roaringly drunk.  But that was even worse, in a way.  As I said before, I drive when I need to think; I drink when I need to forget.  And even I knew that it wasn’t good at all that I wanted to forget the last few minutes so very badly. 

Not that I thought I’d succeed.  I strongly suspected that James or Richard or both would be right behind me, taking the bottle away before I’d drunk enough to manage it.  But either the whiskey was more potent than I realized or I’d shaken them both more than I’d thought possible, because by the time James did finally come down the stairs, enough time had gone by that I was pretty shit-faced.  Not so drunk that I didn’t notice how pale he was, how carefully—and tenuously--pulled together.  I could see how stiffly he moved, could even make out the faint traces of tears around his eyes.  But I _was_ drunk enough by then to ignore it.  I waved the bottle at him jovially, with all the benevolent cheer of the thoroughly smashed.  “James, my lad!” I said heartily.  “Come have a drink with me.  I want to tell you something.  About getting old.”

Give the man credit: James neither yelled nor tried to take away the bottle, which, given how upset and frightened I now know he really was, was something of a feat.  He just took a deep breath, turned his back, and started making a cup of tea, boiling the water and setting out a beaker with long-practiced efficiency.  When it was ready, he sat down beside me at the table. “ _You_ want to tell _me_ about getting old,” he said coolly, spoon clinking as he stirred some honey into his tea.  “You’re only four years older than I am, Jez.”

“Yeah,” I said drunkenly, “but that doesn’t really matter, does it?  It’s like with kids.  Some are grown up enough to take care of themselves at ten; others are still immature ignoramuses at thirty.  It’s the same thing with old-ness.”  I flourished my bottle at him expansively.  “Four years from now you _might_ be as old as I am today, James.  But I really hope you won’t be.  And I honestly doubt you will.  I really, really do.” 

He frowned at me, spoon clink-clinking away inside his beaker.  “What on earth are you going on about, Jeremy?”

I peered at him unsteadily.  My blood alcohol content made it seem like his image was dancing around almost as much as the tea spoon.  “Getting old hurts, James.” 

He snorted, a clear _Oh yes, tell me something I don’t know_ sound.  “No, listen,” I said.  “I mean it hurts, James.  It actually, physically hurts. Oh, it starts out simply enough.  Maybe one morning you wake up and there’s a twinge in your knee that you’ve never had before, or you can’t quite manage to use the can opener in your kitchen in the morning before you’ve had some coffee and warmed up your stiff fingers.  You know. Just little things, to begin with.  The sort of stuff even young people complain about from time to time, so they’re things you can easily ignore.  Then, one day it dawns on you: it’s not just happening from time to time anymore.  It’s every morning, every day.  And then…”  I took a long swig of the really awful American whiskey.  “Then, something bigger happens.  Maybe you blow out a hip.  Or maybe you just slip one of the disks in your back, and it ends up pressing on a nerve so badly that you’re almost paralyzed by the pain…”

James had stopped stirring his tea now.  He laid the spoon carefully on a towel, his face alive with sudden understanding.  “Jez…”

I interrupted him with another hand wave.  “No, let me finish,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s _bad_ , James.  Bad enough to completely take you down.  But you get through it.  Because you remember what it was like being a kid, you know?  You remember breaking a wrist playing football or messing yourself up doing something stupid in a car.  You remember what it was like when your body was still young enough to heal from practically anything.”  I took a deep, sad breath.  “So you just sit tight and wait it out, thinking that time is all you need.  You even give yourself twice or three times as much of it as the doctors say you should need, ‘cause after all, you’re not a kid anymore, and your body has been through a lot.  But then a year goes by.  And then two.  And then one day you realize that you’re never actually going to be all right again, after all.  That pain you wake up with every morning?  It’s much worse now, and it’s there to stay.  You’re going to feel it every single day for the rest of your life.  The only way to _stop_ feeling it is death…”

James didn’t say anything.  He just reached out and covered my hand with his, the one that wasn’t still holding the bottle.  “So you cope,” I finished dully.  “You kick the heavy-duty prescription pain meds…which isn’t fun at all, my friend…because taking them is worse than being in pain; you’re not _you_ when you’re on them. And so some days you drink too much and some days you take four times the amount of Parcemetol the bottle says you should take instead.  But you manage.  You get through it somehow.  Because there _are_ a few good days still.  Or at least, there are days that aren’t so bad.  And even the _really_ bad days serve a purpose: they certainly make the prospect of dying a whole lot less frightening than it used to be when you were a kid, since you now know it’s the one way you’ll ever really give the pain the boot.  So you get…I dunno.  Philosophical.  Resigned. You start thinking that maybe the pain is a good thing, after all.  Like its nature’s way of lessening your attachment to living, of making it easier to let go when the time finally arrives.  So.   You decide to just go on as best you can until then, taking each day as it comes.  Living.  But no longer really alive.”  I leaned toward James earnestly.  “And then…if you’re really, _really_ lucky…a miracle happens.”

“A miracle?”

“Yes.”  I nodded soberly.  “The person you’ve been in love with for…for _forever_ … suddenly comes clean and lets you know he’s just as much in love with you.  And then a good friend in a racing helmet helps you see that the _other_ person you’ve been in love with forever loves you too, and doesn’t mind being part of threesome.  And suddenly there’s love and laughter and really good sex happening everywhere you look, at least one of those three things enlivening every single moment of the day, and it’s enough to make you feel alive again.  To make you forget just what a sad, broken down heap of a body you’re living in.  To make you feel _young.”_   I looked down at the table.  “At least, it does.  Until the two younger men in your threesome start having that really good sex in a way that your body just can’t join in, no matter how much you’d like it to.  And it utterly breaks your heart.”

“ _Jez_.” 

It was a low sound, more pain then word.  I could tell that James was finally starting to get it, to really understand.  But he hadn’t quite grasped it all, as his next words proved.  Or maybe, being James, he just had to take one last stab at solving an unsolvable problem.  “But you _can_ join in, Jez,” he said.  “Whenever and however you want.  Richard and I want you to…God, you have no idea how much we’ve wanted you to.  Tonight, when you…we’d been waiting so, so long.  We can figure out a way to make it happen.  Somehow…”

“NO _.”_

I’d meant to say it firmly.  It came out as more of a shout.  James winced.  I pulled my hand away.  “You still don’t you get it, do you,” I said sadly.  “You and Richard…you’re _different_ from me, James.  For you, pain is still a novelty.  Something to play with, something you can invite for a visit and then kick out again whenever you want to go back to normal life.  And I _love_ that, James.  I love that part of you.  I love that you two are still the way I used to be…still young enough that death is an abstract concept rather than a rapidly approaching friend.  Still young enough to honestly believe you’ll live forever.  But it does put me in one hell of fix.” I took one last, rough swallow of the whiskey and finally put it down.  “Because honestly, James?  The one thing, the one and only thing, that makes being with you young guys bearable is pretending that I'm going to live forever, too.  And when I see you two hurting each other, taking each other to those places only the young can go…I can’t pretend anymore.”  My hands clenched into fists.  “And it’s killing me.”

“Jez.”  James’s voice was hoarse.  “Jez, we didn’t know.  We thought you were still just watching because… because you _liked_ to watch.  Or that you still needed some time to get comfortable with the whole concept, maybe.  Now that we know it’s more than that, we can stop.  Go back to the way things used to be…”

“No,” I said, more sadly still.  My hands were still in fists, so tight that I knew my thickening fingers would feel it the next day.  I shoved them under the table onto my knees, where James couldn’t see.  “No, James.  You can’t stop.  Because what you and Richard have found together is…fuck, James, it’s beautiful.  I don’t _want_ you to stop, to pretend you haven’t found it when you have.  It’s not your fault that I can’t…I can’t just keep on…”  Damn.  It seemed like my words were getting as clenched-up as my fists.  With a great effort, I straightened out my fingers, and shortly thereafter, my body, hauling all my damn inches up out of the chair.  “Look. I think we should stop seeing each other for a while.”

“What?!?”

If he’d looked stricken before, now James looked absolutely sick.  “Not you and Richard.  Just you and Richard and me,” I said quickly, and tried to pretend that he didn’t look like I’d just punched him in the face.  I even tried to tell myself that there was a tiny hint of relief in his eyes.  Otherwise, I would never have been able to make myself leave the table.  “I think we should stop seeing each other for a while.  Just take a break.”

“I…see.”  James wasn’t shocked anymore.  No, he was angry.  The kind of cold, calm anger that’s a hundred times more dangerous than even the worst of my or Richard’s eruptions...and heaven knows how bad those can be.  His voice dropped into a hiss.  “Well, Jeremy.  Unless you somehow failed to notice, the three of us present a _fucking car show_ together.  Or were you planning to ‘take a break’ from that, too?”

“No need,” I said.  “We’re on hiatus, James.  All that’s on the schedule this week is a few meetings, which neither you nor Richard have to attend.  I can have a word with Andy, make sure he’s not expecting to see you, for the next few days at least.  After that…”  James flinched, actually flinched as if the unfinished sentence had been a physical blow.   I wanted to reach out to him, put my hands on his shoulders and kiss away every uncertainty.  But I couldn’t.  I just couldn’t.  “Look, James.  I just need some time.  We’ll… give me a week, all right?  Then we’ll talk.”

“Oh yes,” he said bitterly.  “Because that’s something the three of us are _so_ damn good at.  Talking.  Yes.”  His shoulders slumped heavily.  “Fine, Jeremy.  Go. Do what you need to do. I’ll pick up the pieces with Richard.  Just like always.”

“James…” I began. But he’d already turned his back on me, picking up the abandoned whiskey and pouring a hearty slug into his tea mug, body language dismissing me as thoroughly as if I’d already left the room, and I was drunk enough and heartsick and enough to not fight it.  I let myself out, caught a cab at the corner.  What else was I going to say, anyway? 

The next day I half expected to wake up to a mobile full of voice messages, or at least an angry text or two.  But apparently neither James nor Richard could figure out what to say either, because all I found was…nothing.  There was nothing on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday either. Friday morning, when I went to see Andy for one of those meetings, I sent an intern with a spare set of keys to pick up my car at the pub before the management had it towed.

And started preparing to live my life alone, once again.

***

Andy’s assistant flirted with me a bit that day.  Nice lady—early thirties, shoulder length blond hair, always came to work in a sensible suit which nevertheless managed to make her curvy body look pretty damn good.  We'd been chatting in a friendly kind of way for months, but I hadn't realized that she was, y'know, _interested_ , until that morning when she brought me coffee. I guess it had been a few years since I'd looked for any of the signals.  And she was definitely giving me signals.  Nothing over the top--she was a lady, like I said.  All she did was give me a long look in my eyes when she handed me the cup, her free hand softly playing in her hair.  But subtle as it was, suddenly I knew: if I wanted to take her to bed, I could.   All it would take was a nice dinner and a bottle of wine and that would be that.

It should have made me feel better.  What man wouldn't be flattered by a good-looking lady taking that sort of interest in him?  And it wasn’t like she was some random fan, in love with an image of Jeremy Clarkson that didn’t really exist; she’d worked for Andy long enough to have an idea of who I really was, good and bad.  I should have been pleased.  Comforted by the knowledge that I didn't have to spend the night alone if I didn't want to. 

Instead it made me feel even lonelier.  I turned down her pass by carefully failing to see that she'd made it--not a problem, she just collected some papers from Andy’s desk and left, probably shaking her head a bit at the eternal denseness of the human male but none the worse for wear.  And then I went to work, trying to argue Andy into approving several pieces even I knew were much too ridiculous to ever film.  But the arguing wasn't anywhere near as much fun as it usually was, and when it came time to drive home, my car seemed darker, somehow, colder than usual.  I knew my house would feel that way, too, and I wasn't looking forward to facing the chill I’d find inside.  I wasted some time standing on the front step, wondering if I should just turn myself around and find a nightclub or something instead, before I told myself I was being an idiot and made myself unlock the door.  A drink and a hot shower would chase the away the chill, and I had some sleeping pills--carefully hidden from Richard and especially from James, who didn't approve of me taking them, particularly not when I'd been drinking too--in the back of a drawer that would take away the loneliness.  All I had to do was go in, fix that drink, take that pill, and hit the sheets.  And my first lonely Saturday night as a bachelor would be over. 

But the house wasn't empty when I stepped inside. 

I can't tell you how I knew.  It was certainly dark, and just as cold as I'd expected.  But there was...something.  A sense of expectance, maybe, a sound that wasn't quite silence.  A feeling of fullness where there should have just been empty space.  I stopped dead in my tracks.  My homes have been broken into a few times over the years, and every time I'd walked in after a burglary there had been that same kind of tingle in the air, the same eerie sensation of something-is-not-right. I cursed under my breath, wondering what the hell to do.  Go for one of the guns?  Or head back out to my car, lock myself in with my phone, and call the police?  I was still waffling when I felt a hand close over my wrist, nearly making me jump out of my skin. "Easy, Jeremy.  It's okay," a voice said.  "Everything's all right."

"Hammond?” I said in confusion.  “What the hell is going on?"

"I'll let James answer that." 

Richard let go of my wrist, stepped away and gently closed the front door behind us.  Darkness dropped over my eyes like a blindfold, impossible to see through.  Which should have made me panic ever more.  But there was suddenly a reassuring warmth at my back, a warmth I knew—James was standing behind me.  Don't ask me how I could tell that, either.  Sometimes when you know somebody, really know them, your body memorizes the way you fit together.  I knew exactly whose pelvis was pressed against my ass, whose chest against my shoulders.  And the knowledge made me relax at once.  "May? What on earth…?"

"Shhh, Jeremy.  Hush.  Be still." Barely a whisper, but God, that voice.  Liquid sex, James’s voice can be, just like a hot tongue licking over overheated skin.  "All is well."

"Oh, really?"  It came out considerably less sarcastic than I’d intended.  Someone--Richard, probably, had started lightly brushing my nipples through my shirt, and having James that close is always a turn on.   My body certainly thought the situation was more than all right.  But my mind had more than a few doubts.  "Yeah, well, I'm not sure I see it that way," I said, although it was a bit of an effort to make my voice sound as testy as I wanted.  "I don’t hear from either of you in almost a week, and now…you ambush me and start molesting me in my front hall?  In the dark?  Just what do you two think you're doing?"

For answer, there was a rustling in front of me.  Then Richard--it had to be Richard--gently took my hand.  Without lifting it up at all he very gently, almost ceremonially, pressed a soft kiss into my palm. 

My breath caught.  Maybe Richard had bent over from the waist in order to reach my hand.  But the angle of the kiss, as well as that odd sixth sense that tells you where someone is in the dark even when they aren't actually touching your skin, made me think he was kneeling instead.  I suddenly very much wanted to be in the light, where I could see.  “Richard,” I breathed.  “What…”

“Hush,” James said again.  “Nothing’s _wrong_ , Jez.  We both have a few things we’d like to say to you, that’s all.”  He snorted.  “And it’s your own damn fault you didn’t hear them earlier, you bloody fool.  You’re the one who asked us to give you an entire fucking week to yourself.”

Oh. 

Suddenly the whole horrible, lonely week made sense…and James was right.  It had all been my fault.  Well, what else was new?  “And you pillocks picked _now_ to start listening to me?” I said, relief making my voice rather shrill.  “Christ.  You two really are going to be the death of me.  If you had any idea what this last week has been like…”

“Shh.  We know,” Richard said softly.  “We know, Jeremy.  Because believe me, it was even worse for us.”  I felt a soft, almost apologetic brush of his lips over my knuckles.  “But bad as it was, it was good too, in a way.  It certainly gave me and James a lot of time.  To talk, to think, to figure things out…”

“To see if we could pinpoint precisely where things jumped so far off the bloody track,” James murmured into my back.

“Exactly,” Richard agreed.  “And what we think we figured out is this:  you’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick, Jez.”

“The stick?”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” Richard confirmed.  “See, we think you’ve gotten the wrong idea about what we want from all this.  And especially about what we want from _you_.”  He kissed the tips of my fingers one last time, then let my hand go.  “You seem to think that what James and I both want is for you to be down on your knees at my side.  When the truth is…James? Now?”

“Yes.  Now.  Jez, shield your eyes.”  James kissed a quick goodbye into my shoulder blades, moved away.  Neither of them were touching me any longer, and I felt the loss keenly…but not for long.  Because James flicked on the switch.  And when my eyes quit being dazzled by the abrupt shift from dark to light, they were dazzled by something else entirely.  The sight of Richard Hammond, kneeling just as I’d surmised.

At _my_ feet.

He wasn’t naked, or even bare-chested, as I’d come to expect from seeing him submit to James.  He was completely dressed in the traditional Richard Hammond mode:  jeans, stylish grey button down shirt worn over a clean white tee, wide silver bracelets wrapped around both wrists.  He hadn’t even taken off his boots.  They were there, large and clunky just the way his inner fashion-victim always seemed to prefer, square leather toes digging into the flooring.  But somehow, the fact that he was fully dressed gave the moment even more of an impact.  Because…ugly boots and all…this was Richard.  My Richard.  The one I saw almost every day, the one I’d loved for so long it hurt.  And the look in his eyes left no room for misinterpretation.  “When I’d much rather I was down here and you were up there,” he finished quietly.  “If you’d like that.  If you’ll let me be.”

Fuck _._

Have you ever suddenly been handed everything you always wanted, even if you hadn’t known that you wanted it until that very moment?  Have you ever been that lucky?  If you have, then you’ll know exactly how I felt.  I wanted to reach out to Richard, but I stopped myself. He seemed too much like a mirage that would vanish if I dared to touch it. “That’s what you want?” I said in blank astonishment.  “You really want me to…to…”

“I want the same sort of things from you that I want from James,” Richard said softly.  “I want to _be_ to you what I am to James.  Yes, Jeremy.  Yes.”  He picked up my hand and pressed it to his cheek.

He meant it.  He really did. I knew that even before he turned his head sideways and rubbed his cheek against my palm, a gesture of submissive love that went straight to my heart…and my groin.  My hand cupped his face automatically, feeling the stubble, the sharp angle of his chin—God, so sexy.  And so very, very beautiful.  I let my thumb rub down the line of his jaw, pressing in far harder than I would have liked myself.  Richard hissed and closed his eyes, savoring it.  And that was enough to make me hesitate.  “Richard.  You like being hurt.”

He blinked, opening his eyes enough to give me a completely unimpressed look.  “Yeah.  I think that’s pretty obvious to all of us by now, Jez,” he said, in his best I’m-talking-to-an-utter-idiot-by-the-name-of-Jeremy-Clarkson voice.  “And…?”

“And I’m not sure I can give that to you.”  He started to frown, to pull away.  I doubled my pressure on his face, pulled him right back.  “No.  _No._ Stay right here and listen.  It’s not because I’m squeamish, or I think it’s wrong, or I think it wouldn’t be hot as hell.  I just…”  Rueful laugh.  “I’m an old man, Richard.  Some of the things you’ve had James doing to you lately have been pretty damn athletic.  I’m not sure my arm would hold up.  Or my back.”

“But I don’t need things that intense every goddamn time, Jez,” Richard said earnestly.  “And when I do…when I really, really do…I trust you to figure out how give them to me.  Without going too far.  For either of us.”  His eyes suddenly caught on my mouth, focused on my lips as if mesmerized by them.  His voice became pleading.  “Fuck, Jez.  You really don’t have to cane me or put me over your knee or do anything else that’ll put your back at risk.  If a night ever comes when you honestly think I have to have something like that, you can always ask James to do it for you.  But for the most part… I just need you to take control.  To tell me what to do.  To decide where we’re going and _make_ us get there.”  His breath stuttered, and he awkwardly licked his own lips, even as he continued to stare at mine.  “To be _you.”_

An incredible thrill of absolute rightness ran through my body.  Because, yes, that was me.  Who I’d always been, within our three.  Long before we’d started sleeping together, I’d been the one who decided where we were going, and made sure we all got there.  It wasn’t that I always got it right…God no, hell no.  But I got it right often enough that they were willing to trust me anyway.  To forgive me for even my most overwhelming mistakes.

But could I really do the same thing here?  With this?

One more look at Richard answered my question.  I knew this man, after all.  Knew his thoughts, knew his heart, knew his breath.  Learning how to read his body with the same precision that James did might take time, but time was all I needed; we already had everything else.  It was okay.  I could do this.  I looked at Richard and nodded subtly.

Richard sucked in his breath and nodded back.  Both of us knew, I think, that a promise far more binding than your average marriage vow had just been made.  But there was still one more member of our threesome to consider.  I released Richard and turned to James.  “And you, James?” I said huskily.  “What do _you_ want from me?”

He met my eyes frankly.  For a second I was lost in a wash of blue more brilliant then any summer sky.  And then slowly, awkwardly, he knelt his big body down at Richard's side. 

I think my eyes almost popped out of my head.  It was quite possibly the last thing I’d ever thought James would do.  “No,” I breathed.  “Don’t, James.  You can’t really want…” 

“Yes, Jez,” he interrupted.  “I really do.  I want the exact same things from you that Richard does.”  He laughed softly, breathlessly.  “You have no idea how much.”

“But you’re…er…a pitcher, not a catcher, James,” I objected.  “Or whatever the right word is when it comes to this sort of thing.”

He rolled his eyes.  “I think ‘top’ is the word you’re looking for,” he said.  “And yes, I always have been.  With Richard.  At least, that’s the way it’s worked so far.  One of these days, we’ll probably try trading places…and when we do, I expect it’ll be so good that the entire universe explodes.”  He shared a quick glance with Richard, one filled with so much passionate desire on both their parts that it made my toes curl.  Then he returned his gaze to me.  “Maybe someday, you and I will try switching too,” he finished quietly.  “One day.  In the far distant future.  When we’ve all had a chance to talk about it more, and we’re all really ready.  But for now—“ He swallowed roughly, looking down at his hands. “For now, being the top all the time is _not_ what I need.  And it’s certainly not what I want from you.”

“Oh, no?” I raised my eyebrows skeptically.  “You practically came when you bit my lip the other night, James.”

“ _Yes,_ ” James said desperately.  “Yes, I almost did.  But not because of the bite, Jez. Because it was you.  Because it was you, getting off your goddamned chair, actually coming to join us at last, and I was so fucking _happy,_ I couldn’t breathe…”  James shook his head, looking lost.  “If I’m honest, what I really need is…just to be here, Jez.  Here on my knees at your feet, here on the floor looking up.  I need to give…”  He trailed off awkwardly, as if he couldn’t quite find the words.

My heart broke a little at that, that the most eloquent man I knew couldn’t figure out to explain just what it was he needed so badly.  It was okay, though.  Because over the years I had come to know him just as deeply as I did Richard…and that meant that I already understood.  “It’s all right,” I told him quietly.  “Don’t say anything more, James.  I _know_.” And I stepped forward to start this new chapter of our lives in the same way that I’d started our entire relationship, what felt like a lifetime ago.  With a kiss.  

James let out a little whimper and went absolutely limp, surrendering himself completely as he fell back onto his heels.  I cupped his face in both hands and drank in his lips, loving the feel of his face tilting up to me, reveling in the unfamiliar thrill of controlling the kiss so totally.  Then I did the same thing to Richard.  By the time I finished, my back was aching hideously from bending in such an awkward way, but that no longer mattered.  For the rest of this evening…possibly, for the rest of our _lives…_ they would be coming to me.  I walked to the couch and sat down on it, eyeing my two lovers with a heart full of the deepest, sweetest pain.  Yes, they _were_ mine, and always would be.  Why on earth had I ever doubted?  “Well,” I said huskily, noting with deep satisfaction the way they both shivered at my voice.  “Let’s see where I can take us all tonight, shall we?”

They nodded in concert, each wearing the same wonderful expressions of terrified hope.  How could I disappoint them?  I made my voice as commanding as I knew.  “Both of you.  _Come here.”_

And they did.

FIN

**Author's Note:**

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